Re: Copying minidiscs

Just returned to my computer today and read this thread on MD copying...
Pretty complete discussion but I didn't see this mentioned - For those who
can afford it, there are MD decks which copy the data stream as recorded on
the MD. I.e., it does NOT pass through the ATRAC decompression/compression
algorithm. This produces a clone of the MD. These decks are intended for
the pro market and the their prices reflect it. (You need two machines to
clone a MD, of course.) See the minidisc community page (www.minidisc.org
?) for more details. Now we need a service company to dup minidiscs in
this
fashion.
Dennis Leas
-----------------------------
dennis@mdbs.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Tom Ritchford <tom@swirly.com>
To: Loopers-Delight@annihilist.com <Loopers-Delight@annihilist.com>
Date: Thursday, September 02, 1999 1:00 PM
Subject: Re: Copying minidiscs
>>IMHO: If you have the choice between D->D copying or
>>D->A->D ALWAYS take the D->D copy. You may not notice
>>a great deal of generation loss at first, but it's there.
>
>well, there will be generational loss even in an
>uncompressed digital transfer, due to jitter or
>just errors. the error correction will handle
>*nearly all* of them...
>
>
>>going through a
>>digital:analog converter, and then back again analog:digital
>>gives you a much wider sensitivity to distortion, hiss, electronic
>>buzz
>
>much as I love digital, I can't really agree with this.
>
>if your levels are set properly, there should be little or
>no noise added. the d/a/d sections on a professional or
>semi-professional machine will be better than 90dB, so if they
>were the only problem you could make a hundred generations before
>getting to the level of an analog mastering deck or a million
>generations before getting down to the level of a good cassette deck.
>
>You'd be much more likely to get noise from other sources
>interfering with your copies between the two conversion sections.
>
>>
>>Test the theory if you must.. Take 2 Sony MD's, go line-out to line-in
>>and make a copy. Turn it around and copy the copy, again, again,
>>again until you hear the hiss. Now try it digital -> digital and note
>>that the sound never alters from the original.
>>
>>Ken
>
>